That is a very big loss as one should not use social logins in all sign-ups.
Ask HN: Should we own the free stuff we pay for?
121–130 of 309 posts
Re: Ask HN: Should we own the free stuff we pay for?
#122Earlier quoted context omitted.
There really needs to be a zero cost custom-domain email hosting solution. I'd love to have webmail on my own domain, hosted by someone else, and with ads on the side. Those ads should generate ~$20 per user per year (after all, they can be targeted based on emails I'm sending and receiving, and I'll be looking at them many minutes every day - the perfect combination for high revenue ads). With $20/user/year, there s…
Just a heads up you could use Cloudflare Email Routing to forward *@foo.com to foo@gmail.com for free It looks like Zoho might have a free plan too but I've never tried it https://www.zoho.com/mail/zohomail-pricing.html ImprovMX also does email routing for free along with webhooks and such
Cloudflare Email Routing is still in private beta. I'm eagerly awaiting it
Re: Ask HN: Should we own the free stuff we pay for?
#123> what is an identity? PGP is a good solution, and in general the crypto space has the right idea in my opinion. I like the idea of using cryptographic key pairs to sign messages and prove identity, but the learning curve makes it impractical for general use. The best place to start is owning a domain you control, at least that way you can manage your own facade.
In general, if you want people to be able to use cryptographic signatures to prove their identity, they are going to have to know what those things are and how they work. Since this is an entirely new thing in the world there is no existing culture to map it to. The problem is not specific to any particular technology. This would be an excellent topic for new curriculum for the schools. Some ideas need to be generall…
Exactly this. Good point.
Re: Ask HN: Should we own the free stuff we pay for?
#124> lost access to paid services that I had set up with social login I signed up to Quora with my Facebook account, back in the day. Deleted Facebook in 2013 and lost access to my Quora account, with no possible way to recover it. I haven't used a social login since. In my case, it was fairly harmless, but it made me realise how dangerous social login is. Every time there's a signup, I look for "signup with email". It'…
Social logins only carry your information and a token, and you can enter to your profile and add a password too (99% of the time).
So, you can use social login (OpenID Connect in reailty), as an automated form filler and add your password, so your account will be effectively won't depend on that provider anymore.
I use a lot of services like that.
Re: Ask HN: Should we own the free stuff we pay for?
#125An important tip if you intend to send everything to gmail. Do NOT send everything to gmail via forward. Every bit of spam you forward is going to count against your domain name. I had someone who did this on a community server and it wrecked our rating for a while. Instead, have gmail pick up your email via pop3. This will avoid the "spam origin/relay" problem of forwarding.
I have Gmail forwarding all spam to my domain/fastmail. Any issues that way?
Re: Ask HN: Should we own the free stuff we pay for?
#126Earlier quoted context omitted.
And as always it will backfire on users! Now it is impossible to find unlimited rentals, every contract has yearly extensions! In some countries landlords even rotate tenants every two years, else they would get extra rights from long stay.
Limited rentals are actually banned unless you have a very specific reason (you plan to occupy the flat yourself, you plan to renovate extensively or the flat is meant for temp workers - so no extensions and much shorter intervals) in Germany as well.
This is misleading. I moved to Germany last year and there's a whole secondary market - much bigger than I've seen in any other country, in sublets. While you officially need anmeldung (city registration) to live anywhere in Germany, there are at least as many sublet apartments without anmeldung available as official rental apartments on the open market. They're usually a good deal cheaper too. Lots of people (immigrants especially) have their 'official' anmeldung with a friend or relative, and move between short term sublets (1 - 6 months, but usually 3 or less) for years at a time. There doesn't seem to be any regulation of this sublet market at all - except by the management of individual apartments (where the subletter is in violation of their own rental agreement).
Re: Ask HN: Should we own the free stuff we pay for?
#127You are not overreacting.
I've always thought we were excessively tailoring to ease of use rather than efficiency. Recently I started questioning that idea. We should have probably designed everything with security and stability as the nr 1 priority. If it doesn't need to be implemented in software it probably shouldn't be. Add a few extra chips to the mobo or have some pci card.
Government probably shouldn't be running things like a messaging services but it can offer infrastructure to facilitate it. An actual court for disputes, violations and crimes would be expensive but its probably worth it. No bans until you get your day in court.
Even in extreme cases where you [say] want to discontinue the email service you've provided. We could have laws that force you to auction the domain and force the new owner to continue the service for same price. OR compensate the (free) users for damages.
Re: Ask HN: Should we own the free stuff we pay for?
#128In sensible jurisdictions, a tenant cannot be kicked out for non-payment of rent without a court order. That's right, a debtor who owes money to another cannot be booted without an independent government body approving it. So it's not inherently wrong to say a user of a free service should have some rights. In some situations, it's not fair to pull the rug out under people. I think that there will come a point where…
And as always it will backfire on users! Now it is impossible to find unlimited rentals, every contract has yearly extensions! In some countries landlords even rotate tenants every two years, else they would get extra rights from long stay.
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Re: Ask HN: Should we own the free stuff we pay for?
#129When you put it this way, it's really quite remarkable how tenuous our hold is on even paid for digital services. There is really nothing you could do with a car to prompt the car maker to take it from you. And the state will only take it if you break the law in particularly dangerous ways. When it comes to other possessions it's even harder for anyone to take them away from you. If I take a kitchen knife and stab so…
Cars are also digital service platforms which can and do take away things. I am currently playing a safety score minigame to unlock enhanced driving features. If I pay $2000 my software will enable my minivan to have a 0-60 of a Ferrari. This is all premised upon a connectivity package I'm obligated to pay for but have been gifted for a year by the manufacturer. To put it more bluntly, my eyeballs are watched by AI t…
Most cars do not do this. Teslas are famous for their DRM, restrictive connectivity, and shady upsells. Those will show up in the "cons" column of any honest review.
A normal car in 2022 will not constantly surveil you. No critical functionality is tied to an online account in any non-Tesla mass-produced car that I am aware of.
Re: Ask HN: Should we own the free stuff we pay for?
#130Google is simply not a very reliable business partner for tech. I have a decade worth of experience in the Danish public sector, where I’ve had plenty of great experiences with both Amazon and Microsoft. I know that a lot of people would prefer things to be open source, but part of what you pay for in an Enterprise Organisation is availability of support. When AWS first entered the European market, most of what they…
> Google mean while has the same business-to-business support that it does for private customers like the author here. For some services it’s because Google doesn’t care, but they do care about Education and they still can’t figure out how to readjust to be a valuable business partner even when they actually want to sell you something. My experience with Google's business support is that instead of talking to a brick…
"My experience with Google's business support is that instead of talking to a brick wall, there's now someone between you and the brick wall. "
That feels like a lot like the support my company (multi bullion dollar company) gets from MS and other vendors. We have super friendly people to interface with but if you have a real problem nothing happens besides a lot of friendly phone calls with "action items" and "follow ups". But when an issue hasn't been addressed for months it's a taboo to call that out. Even the managers at my own company don't like when you say "issue X hasn't been resolved". Instead it seems an unspoken rule to just keep scheduling conference calls that never lead to anything but are very friendly and upbeat.